by Paula Cox
The mist still hangs over this isolate double-lane road, a road which leads to the ferry and then to Seattle and then to office terminals where men tell their colleagues about the cute little piece at the Twin Peaks. The road which, each day, brings me one step closer to college and Seattle and leaving this piss-hole forever.
And the road down which the biker walks, emerging from the mist, eyes wide and alert, but somehow calm at the same time. And blue. They are the deepest, brightest blue I have ever seen in a person. Ocean-blue, but really ocean-blue, not just ocean-blue like Professor Eagleton told us in Similes 101. He is tall, around six three, and wide, wind-tanned and with sharp, chiseled, manly features, the sort of features neither women nor men can ignore. The sort of strong, in-control features which makes Chester let go of my leg.
As soon as he lets go, I take a step back, wondering why the hell I didn’t do that thirty seconds ago.
“What’re you doing?” the man says. He takes another step forward, looking like an outlaw in his scuffed blue jeans, black workman’s boots, and leather jacket with a picture of a bright blue wave on the front, the words Tidal Knights inscribed beneath it. Another step, and another, until he is standing at the rear of the truck with Chester at the top of it. I watch, rapt, unable to look away.
It’s weird the things your mind throws at you in times like this, but right now, as I watch these men stand off, I keep thinking about how blue the biker’s eyes are and how I’ve always wanted bright blue eyes. When I was a girl, I would take stare at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, holding my eyes as wide open as I could without blinking and I would will the gold to change to blue, pray for it, sometimes chant for it. Maybe because skies are blue and so often as a kid all I wanted was to fly into an azure sky and just keep on flying. Fly away from Dad and Mom and this town and all of it, just away. Strange, to think about this as the biker closes the distance between him and Chester, arms at his sides, striking summer-sky eyes staring.
“I’m just—”
“Just what?” the biker says, so close to Chester now that I find it difficult to believe I ever thought Chester looked big. The biker is a giant; Chester is a mouse. The fat man looks up with watery eyes at the wind-tanned biker. “Just groping a woman who’s trying to do her job? Look, man. I don’t know what kind of asshole you are, but you’ve got exactly five fuckin’ seconds to get in your car and drive out of here. Say a goddamn thing or go for a weapon or even fuckin’ squeak and I’ll tie you to the back of the car and drive you away myself.”
The man speaks with the absolute calm of somebody who means every word they say.
Chester licks his lips, seems about to say something, and then looks into the man’s eyes and thinks better of it. It almost makes me laugh to watch Chester waddle into his car, fumble with the clutch and the gearstick, and then reverse awkwardly out of the lane. Almost, but the phantom of his fat D.E.A.D hand still lingers on my thigh. The car screeches down the lane, into the mist, the biker watching calmly, arms hanging at his sides like a man ready to leap into action at any moment.
He watches until the car is out of sight, and only then turns to me. Every single man who comes through here—every single one, without exception—at least glances at my bikini-clad body. This man just looks calmly into my face, as though he’s so used to seeing undressed women he doesn’t even bother looking. The men who come through here, they seem either grateful or angry to be looking at me dressed like this; this man just looks matter-of-fact.
“Uh, thanks,” I say, when he just stares.
“No need to thank me.”
He just watches.
“I think there is,” I counter. “Chester, he’s always been weird. But, well, I didn’t expect him to get that weird. I didn’t expect him to do that. I never dreamed he would—”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I’m sayin’ there’s no need to thank now me ’cause you’re going to thank me later.”
His voice has the lilt of a commander, somebody used to being obeyed. It’s an alluring lilt, an undertone which makes me want to obey even though I just met the guy. This man’s the sort of guy who could walk into a roomful of strangers and tell them all to lie down low and every single one of them would do it just because they’d just assume he was in charge. He has that aura about him.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“What time do you get off?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Why are you being so cagey?”
I half-laugh, half-gasp. “Because a man just grabbed my leg without my permission and now you’re asking when I get off. Isn’t that enough of a reason?”
“I want to take you out,” he says, as though I haven’t spoken.
“Out where?”
“Out-out. You have clothes, don’t you?”
“Of course I have clothes.”
He walks up to the window and places his hands on the frame.
“What’s your name?”
“Lana Thompson. Lana. Yours?”
“Kade Cross.”
Chester, Kade, it seems everybody has weird names this morning.
“You reckon it’s a weird name?”
“I said that out loud?”
Kade grins at me, just a tiny grin, more of a quirk of the lips. But enough to make me trust him. At least trust him enough not to run to the other side of the booth, anyway.
“Yeah, you did. You make a habit of not knowing if you say things out loud?”
“I’m a creative writing student,” I say. “At least, I was. And now I’m working to pay it . . . Listen, Kade—” Despite how unusual his name is, it feels good on my lips. “—I don’t know you. Thanks for warning Chester off and all, but I don’t know if—”
He smirks, cocky as hell, but there’s a quiet confidence underlying the cockiness. It’s not just bluster; he’s really sure of himself. I can’t help but be attracted to it. In a world where so many people, including myself, feel lost, a man who knows exactly where he is magnetic, the sort of man a woman can’t ignore. “Look me in the eyes and tell me you don’t want me to take you out.” He rests his elbows on the window frame, leaning into the booth, staring at me. Staring with those blue eyes, bright alive eyes, wolf-like eyes, Viking eyes, Mediterranean eyes, eyes which take me to a thousand places and none of them here, boring old Bremerton, full-of-memories-and-few-of-them-good Bremerton.
I do want it. Of course I want it. I want to be anywhere but here, somewhere else, somebody else. I want to be a writer who writes about how one day she went on an adventure with a mysterious biker and how his eyes made her think of far off lands and distant pleasures. Yes, I decide. I do want it. I see him register this; his smirk twitches.
“I thought so,” he says. “So what time do you finish, Lana?”
“Four o’clock,” I say. “I get off at four. I guess you can—”
“I’ll come by and pick you up then.”
He turns and paces to his bike, too quick for me to respond. Before I can truly register everything—Chester, Kade, the medley of emotion stirring in my belly—his bike is kicking up gravel and growling into the mist.
I bring my hands to my temples, massaging, and then turn and look at the sun, just cresting the horizon. Soon, the nighttime mist will dissipate and the sun will burn down and then—and then I’ll be with Kade, mysterious biker, the man who just saved me from fat, perverted Chester. Fear still infuses me, but it is getting weaker and weaker each moment until, by the time Kade’s bike is far away, silent, I am no longer afraid.
No, instead I am excited. A date. A date.
It’s been a while and, let’s face it, I’m not going to turn down an opportunity to go on a date with the man with the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. If only for the chance to look into them one more time.
Chapter Three
Kade
All day, dealing with business, Lana’s on my mind. Short, blonde, curvy, the sort of woman to make a man go a little crazy in the cours
e of a day, make no mistake. The sort of woman to make even a man like me lose his concentration. Sorting through the Seattle accounts, visiting with business contacts, all the shit a leader has to do to make sure a club keeps running, and always, right there at the back of my mind, that woman in that fuckin’ bikini. Goddamn, the way those breasts squashed up in that bikini top, all fleshy and making me wish it was my hands holding her up and not the fabric.
As I drive through the sunlit spring afternoon on way my way back to the Twin Peaks to collect her, I wonder if maybe I was a bit of a prick for thinking about those perfect tits a few seconds after what happened with the fat man. But I’ve never been one to care much about stuff like that, and I let it drop quickly. I’m more pissed the business with the fat man made me forget about my black coffee. One hell of a morning without it.
I bring my Harley to a stop by the side of the road. Both booths of the Twin Peaks are filled now, two girls in bikinis, youthful and fresh and all the jazz, all the stuff that drives men wild. But looking at them, I can’t get as excited as when I looked at Lana. It’s weird, ’cause she’s just another woman, one I talked to for just couple of minutes. Maybe it’s because I saved her. Maybe I’m a knight in shining armor. I chuckle to myself, thinking what Duster would say: “Yeah, the trailer rat turned biker turned leader turned fucking knight. Course.” I hear him laugh along with me.
Lana exits through the big oval entrance and walks past the statue and then across the road, looking both ways.
“Hey,” she says.
“Alright.” I reach under the seat, pick up the helmet, and hand it to her. “There you go. I’ll take that.”
I take her bag and secure it underneath.
“Now what?” she asks.
“Now,” I say, looking her in the eye, knowing she’s getting excited just by the way her eyes get wider, “you climb on.”
She gulps, but then nods. What the fuck is it about this woman? Her cheeks are slightly flushed, tinged red, and her eyes are a brown so light they look golden. She’s wearing a long coat, which to me is just as goddamn hot as that bikini. Now all I’m thinking about is what’s underneath the coat, how if I just undid a couple of buttons I could get another glimpse of that smoking body.
She sees me looking, and says: “I’m wearing clothes underneath the coat.”
I shrug. “I don’t care.”
She smiles, pleased that she caught me looking. “Of course not.”
She slips the helmet on and climbs onto the bike.
“You ridden before?” I ask.
“No,” she says, voice muffled in the helmet. “What do I do?”
“Hold on,” I say, and kick the Harley to life.
I ride us out to a bar on the waterfront. A sort of dive place, but a place which makes the best burgers on the waterfront, and a place where the owner owes the Tidal Knights and never charges me a dime. When I park the bike, I think a couple of men are staring at me. Dive-bar types, scraggly hair, covered in poorly-painted tattoos, sneering begging-to-be-punched faces. But then I follow the trail of their gaze and see that they’re staring at Lana instead.
“They know you?” I say.
Lana’s cheeks get redder. She mumbles: “Might’ve come through the Twin Peaks.”
She looks awkward, embarrassed, and that annoys me because she’s been made to feel like shit once already today and I don’t figure she’s due a second go. The men are standing under the eaves of the bar, smoking cigarettes right at the door, puffing clouds into the faces of every passing person. Making it impossible for us to walk in without passing them. Fine, fuck it.
I step close to Lana and wrap my arm smoothly around her shoulders. Half to show these dive-bar fucks that they can’t stare down a woman I’ve brought by the bar, and half because I can’t resist the urge to feel this woman in my arms. Small, and vulnerable, and protected. Yeah, protected.
“You don’t have to,” she says.
I gaze calmly at the dive-bar bastards. “I want to.”
I lead her into the bar, right past the men. I’m waiting for them to say something, almost wanting them to. Truth is, you don’t go from living in a trailer park with an alcoholic for a father and then leading the biggest biker gang in Seattle without developing a taste for violence. But maybe these men know that about me, too, because when I lead Lana past, they don’t say a word.
The bar is full of tattooed men, bearded men, fat tank-top-wearing men, and easy women, women with short skirts and low-cut tops walking unsteadily on heels, women pounding shots at the bar, women screaming at each other. Over the bar, a sign reads: We Serve Until You Drop. A jukebox plays some modern dancing tune, a song I don’t know. Me, I’m more of a Johnny Cash man.
Arm still around her, I lead Lana to a corner booth and wave at the barman. He comes right over, recognizing me. His name is Francis and he’s a short teenage kid with one leg shorter than the other, meaning he has to wear a block shoe.
“Francis, Lana. Lana, Francis.” I wave a hand between them. A man has to have manners, even a man like me. “Lana, what’s your poison?”
“Vodka and coke, please.”
“I’ll take a beer. Thanks, Francis.”
Francis limps off. Lana watches me closely, watches for a long time, watches until Francis brings the drinks, and then just keeps on watching.
I take a sip from my beer and then ask: “Looking for something, little lady?”
She flinches, as though just realizing what she’s been doing. “Uh, no.” She giggles, and then sips her vodka and coke through a straw. “I just—your eyes are very blue. I know that’s a really strange thing to say and I wouldn’t usually but . . . They are really blue.”
She’s right; when I was a kid everyone in the trailer park called me Blue Eyes, called me it right up until the day me and Duster busted out of that shithole.
I wink at her, casual-like. “Ah,” I say. “My eyes have already done all the work. Well, fuck—I guess there’s nothing to do but go back to your place.”
“I’m not that kind of girl,” Lana says, but her voice is playful, like maybe she could be that kind of girl for a certain kind of man. And, dammit, looking at her sitting there with her flushed cheeks and her lips pursed around that straw, I’d do a damn lot to be the right kind of man.
“I never said you were.” I smile at her. Or maybe it’s more of a smirk. I can’t help it. Smirking at women is second-nature to me, the same way bowing before them is second nature to other men. Back in the trailer park, when me and Duster were nothing more than wild animals running around, getting into fights and picking up girls, I did as much smirking as I did fighting. Usually, when I smirk at a woman, she blushes and flutters her eyelashes and throws herself at me and then it’s game over, job done, and I lose interest pretty damn soon after that. Maybe that makes me an asshole, but fuck it, I never claimed to be anything else.
But when I smirk at Lana, she just smiles shyly.
“You implied it,” she says. “I think what I’m going to do is finish this drink and then leave respectfully and never talk to you again. Yep, that sounds like a plan.”
She’s funny, biting, she’s got a goddamn personality.
I ask: “Why’re you working at the Twin Peaks?”
“You mean: ‘What’s a girl like you doing working in a place like this?’”
I laugh, can’t help but laugh. It isn’t often I meet a woman who can make me laugh. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“I worked in a normal café for a while. You know, the sort where you get to wear clothes and the most you ever have to deal with is some creep looking down your T-shirt when you’re leaning over to pick up a tray. But the money wasn’t good enough. Well, do you really want to hear this?’
“I do,” I say, shocked at myself. “Yeah, I really do.”
“Okay. Well, I’m going to school for Creative Writing, and I’ve finished two years, but I didn’t have money for the third; I saved all through high school, started workin
g as soon as anyone would hire me. I thought I’d be able to save enough for the third while I was studying, but—nope. So I took a year off, started applying for grants and whatever, and then one of the girls mentioned the Twin Peaks and how those girls get paid more hourly. And I thought to myself, screw it. I’ll strip off and make some more money. My plan is to move to Seattle and finish my studies there.”
“And then what?”
“And then, Kade, I become a world-renowned writer and you’ll be lucky to get five minutes of my time.” She waves a hand over the bar, over the country, over the world. “And everybody will know my name, and when you’re old you’ll tell your pals: ‘I once met Lana Thompson.’ And none of them will believe you.” She laughs, shaking her head, sipping her vodka. “No, I don’t know. Maybe a bit of freelance. Maybe get a job as an editor. Maybe get a desk job. Anything’ll beat standing there with my breasts out for perverts like Chester, though it’s not all bad.”